


Lost and Found

by Carpe Natem (Demeanor)



Series: Twelve Days of Solstice [5]
Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Drunkenness, Fluff, Gen, Hopeless Audrey, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Past Abuse, Stalwart Dismas, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhappy marriage, Winter fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demeanor/pseuds/Carpe%20Natem
Summary: Alone and hopeless, Audrey reflects on her life, wondering where she went so wrong until a much-needed Light in the graveyard fog reminds her of how far she’s come this Solstice eve.
Relationships: Grave Robber & Highwayman (Darkest Dungeon)
Series: Twelve Days of Solstice [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057325
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vault_Emblem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vault_Emblem/gifts).



> Merry Darkmas, this gets pretty dark. 
> 
> Fair warning, there's some drunken suicide ideation and mentions of a past abusive relationship, though it does have a happy ending. 
> 
> Sorry you got such a dark present, Vault! Also, I wasn't sure if you were particular about Dismas & Audrey as friends or Dismas/Audrey as lovers, but I tried to leave it open ended so it could be interpreted either way.

**Lost and Found**

Audrey was drunk.

All things considered, that was a common enough occurrence in her life with rather growing frequency of late, though the same could be said for any of the Hamlet’s vetern denizens with hollowed eyes and abandoned hope. 

Today was supposed to be a _happy day_ , or so she was constantly nagged by the Light-lovers of the town. Even some of the less-religious folk had been looking forward to Solstice eve, the longest night of the year when people set up the dozen Lights of Eternal Flame, then drank and ate and kissed and fucked and reveled until daybreak. Exchanged presents, sang hymns, prayed for salvation, yada yada yada. Empty, base debauchery.

Quite frankly, Audrey was tired. Exhausted down to her bones. Of the Light, of the hope, of _everything._

And so she drank. She might not have been _merry,_ but she could certainly be _giddy._

Audrey stumbled through the Hamlet’s graveyard, bottle in one hand, shovel in the other. Again, this wasn’t exactly uncommon for her to find sanctuary in the settled silence of the crypts where she didn’t have to smile or laugh or feel anything at all, really. It was her only relief some days, when the exhaustion was at its worst. Like now.

She gave each headstone of the fallen heroes a good tap with the shovel as she walked along -- not _just_ because she liked the sound it made or helped her to feel more alive, but also out of respect; after all, it kept the snow off along with the benefit of calming her frayed nerves.

This last expedition had been particularly brutal, and while little Junia and lovely Para and stern Reynauld were happy to gather round the town’s square, outfitted with too many candles and cheesy filigree that did nothing to hide its _true_ nature of filth and rot, Audrey wasn’t. She needed to get away, away from the town, from her mind. From the memories of Solstices past that were bubbling at her sanity like a potent toxin.

“I hereby take you as my Light!”

Another _swig_ of the bottle, another _bang_ of her shovel.

Perhaps she could even wake the dead this hallowed Solstice eve, the poor dears. If _she_ had to suffer the holidays, why shouldn’t they? She was practically just as dead anyway. 

“To have and to hold from this night forward!” Audrey sang with a cheery tune that she didn’t quite feel in her drunken state. Whether she was speaking to her shovel, her bottle, or her slipping sanity, Audrey wasn’t sure and didn’t care, merely belted out a laugh and continued. “In sickness and in health!” A swig, a bang. “In fortune and in _debt_!” 

At that, she sneered as if tasting something foul on her tongue, and spit to the snow in a very unladylike way, then thought her apologies to her mother, to her husband, to the Light and to the graves that kept her company and listened to her cracking laughter that faded to silence. 

“Til death do us part!”

She finished off the bottle easily, then on a whim, smashed it to pieces against the headstone of some poor sap that, like her, apparently didn't know when to quit in its lifetime. Audrey had never been the cowardly sort, try as she might in the past, and oftentimes regretted her comfortable persistence in the endeavors that tempted her sanity or her wellbeing with little pay off. It was a wonder she had hung around the Hamlet for as long as she did, save for the fact that it kept her debt collectors away.

The fragments of the bottle glinted in the snow like a mosaic, pretty and deadly and broken.

Not unlike her, really.

At the sight, some dreary part of her mind recalled the letter opener that she kept on her person in a different lifetime, sharpened to a point and stashed in the seams of her outmoded bodice. 

For the day her cowardice got the better of her, whether that be in the form of her husband’s life or her own. Not that it mattered anymore -- her husband was a thing of old, an unwelcome ghost from Audrey’s past life that shouldn’t have a sway on her any longer, but somehow still did. The cruel bastard. If he hadn’t first exhausted his existence on such a myriad of indulgences, Audrey surely would have killed him herself, eventually. 

Troubled, irritated, Audrey grabbed the largest glass shard she could find, dazzling and wine-colored and temptation incarnate, and laughed as she continued on, recounting one of the many mantras of decorum drilled into her from birth.

“ _Poise makes perfect, darling!_ ” 

Audrey laughed loudly, a terrible sound to her own ears, and continued with the lessons her mother taught her as she found a space in the snow and put her shovel to it. One after another, she recited her mother’s mantras, sculpting her into a woman more palpable to high society: be still, be quiet, be prim; be smaller, softer, sexier, whatever it took to make her marriage material, then later whatever it took to maintain her material worth as a wife. For that was all Audrey seemed to be worth, then. A wife, and nothing more.

The shovel made quick work of the snow, but the moment it hit the frozen top layer of soil, Audrey felt her muscles strain. She promptly ignored them, forcing her shovel deeper.

Yes, she _hated_ her mother and likewise, she _hated_ her husband. They were high-class perfection and expected as much, if not more, from Audrey. And she tried, _Gods above_ , she tried her very best, for she might have loved them both once, though Audrey had quickly learned her mistake in bothering in the end.

That being said… Audrey wasn’t quite sure who she was with them dead and gone.

Her entire marriage -- and subsequently her entire adulthood -- was spent with clearly defined roles of obedient wife, of being lovely decor for her husband, and on rare occasions, the incidental _victim_ when she didn’t mind her mantras. That wretched waif of Audrey’s past was pathetic and resentful. She was afraid and hopeful. It had been a painful existence, but it was a certain one and at the very least, Audrey knew where the pieces lay and could maneuver them as such. 

No longer. 

She was well-practiced at digging up graves, but they were never easy in the winters as the earth below was too solid, too compact from the snow. Regardless, Audrey was undeterred, her sole focus on the satisfying, methodical push and hoist of the dirt.

It felt like yesterday that she was doing the same, hair loose for the first time in her life, dress disheveled, grin mad as she fell into the particular unsteady rhythm of the _dig_. Though it was her first time, Audrey made up for anything she lacked in experience or physical strength with her sheer enthusiasm. Not at seeing her dearly departed husband again, no, but at the vile crime she was committing, the disgusting act that marred her respect as a lady, that soiled her hems and nails and name as a noblewoman, that brought her low and drove her into the mud. 

For the first time in her life, Audrey had felt _alive._ Her own woman, stripped of decorum.

It couldn’t be helped that she spent the remainder of her days running from her sins, from her husband’s debts, forever chasing that heady feeling of being alive once and for all.

Really, it was a crying shame that she couldn’t find that feeling at the end of a bottle.

The shovel cut through the muck like a blade, strong with her drunken determination to find that feeling somewhere within the soil, piling up mounds of dirt around the edges of the grave. A standard burial site was six feet down to prevent the spread of any plague or disease, to keep the bodies from resurfacing with summer floods, and to deter the wild dogs from digging up the poor dead louts. 

No depth could keep Audrey out, however.

And so, she dug. Three feet wide and eight feet long -- which was a little _much_ , if you asked her. Perhaps that giant Leper fellow, Baldwin something or other, might need an eight foot tall grave, but not _most_ people. 

Audrey’s husband had as grand of a tombstone as he had visage of a manor; all opulence and wealth at first glance, until one stepped inside and dug a little deeper. When Audrey, crazed and wild and _alive,_ flung open the top of his exquisite coffin, breathing through the hem of her ruined dress and surprised at her iron gut holding at the grisly sight before her, she was aghast. His rings were _gone_ ?! But no, she merely had to dig around for them, the dead sod, before she found her stolen inheritance in his coat pocket, as if expecting his destitute widow to come hunting for them in his afterlife. Her husband always _did_ love making things unnecessarily difficult for her, even then while entombed with his greed.

He got what he deserved in the end, as did Audrey. 

She had considered selling his final riches to pay off his debt, but her name was already smeared in high society. Fine by her.

“‘ _A bird in the hand_ ’, the judge had said. What an absolute _loon_ he was,” she sighed to the ghosts, stepping back to admire her night-long handiwork. The grave was finished, as deep and wide and tall as one could hope for in a resting place, yet she found it as empty and void of that _feeling_ as the wine bottle had been. Drats.

Now useless, Audrey let her precious shovel fall to the side and into the pile of muddy snow, job finished. It’s final resting place was nearly poetic, if not so gauche, Audrey mused to no one, realizing the same could be said for her. 

In the distance, the Hamlet’s raucous sounds of Solstice eve could be heard above the gentle wind biting at her ears, reddening her nose and chilling the tips of her fingerless gloves. When she looked up to the stars, she felt momentarily at peace with her life, terrible and cowardly as it truly was, fallen from given grace that _she_ was. “From the loftiest heights to the blackest depths...” murmured Audrey to the wind like an epitaph. 

With exhaustion settling back into her aching bones, physical and otherwise, Audrey took a seat at the edge of the freshly dug grave, letting her legs dangle in teasingly. 

For what little mind she had left to do so, Audrey reflected on her happier days with her Hamlet friends, which had been some of the freer, livelier moments of her already too-tired existence. Para and her beautiful adoration of all things toxic and squirming and deliciously vile, Boudica and her loud appreciation for everything that went against the Grave Robber’s decorum mantras, Dismas and his grumpy exterior that matched her gallow’s humor and served it right back to her. Dismas, who simultaneously was her exact counterpart in all the ways that mattered and exact opposite in all the ways that didn’t any longer.

Vaguely, Audrey recalled Dismas allowing her to borrow one of his favorite books on rare restless nights which, quite frankly, Audrey was surprised that the ex-brigand could even read in the first place for how dense and uneducated the poor thing liked to be. _Alice and Wonderland,_ she recalled fondly, then suddenly barked a laugh when she remembered a particular passage. 

“ _Off with my head!_ ” Audrey cackled herself to tears, legs still dangling at the edge of the grave, broken bit of bottle cradled in her hand. “A most capital idea, Dismas!” 

Her laughter was ash in her throat, then, choking her and leaving her only with her tears.

She had always been too afraid, too _hopeful_ , to consider such cowardice while in her husband’s captivity. Now, with all the aimless freedom she could have ever imagined holding as a caged creature, Audrey was fearless, was _hopeless_ , and whispered, “...A most romantic death.”

Movements mechanical, mind taken over by the neverending, bleak exhaustion, Audrey lifted her precious hat off her head and set it to the side lest she bled on it, then ran her fingers along the point of the broken wine bottle. She had done a fine job of shattering it, really, for the long splinter of glass was nearly as sharp as her beloved daggers, which Dismas had rudely snuck from her earlier that night. Perhaps the Highwayman was smarter than he looked, Audrey mused. Either way, this should do the trick, surely. 

Perhaps if she planned it right, she might get a final look at the stars from her grave.

Before she could decide for sure, Audrey heard the crunching of snow behind her and stiffened, once again caught dirt-handed and reputation sullied in a compromising situation. 

_Lordy_ , but this seemed to happen often.

“Oi, you’ll catch hypothermia out here if you’re not careful, minx.”

It was that familiar voice, irritating and fond all the same but now laced with unspoken concern, unless Audrey’s ears deceived her. A voice she never expected to hear at her lowest moment, nor would she ever expect to feel… abashed by. _Relieved_ by. A voice Audrey was ever-partial to under normal circumstances but certainly on edge by now.

_Dismas._

“Seems I’ve been sentenced to dawdle with oafish cut-purses for the rest of my days,” Audrey drawled, as if to distract him from what he’d already seen her doing. It was all she could manage to say before her voice began to crack.

There was no return laughter or smirk, like she’d hoped, and when it came to Dismas, who never seemed to take anything seriously in his life, that was a bad sign.

“I’m sure there’s worse company. I could go fetch the Caretaker, if you’d like,” Dismas merely shrugged dismissively and came to sit next to her, uninvited but strangely welcomed nonetheless. He glanced at Audrey, then down to the bit of bottle in her hands for a long moment, then looked back up to the stars, clearly ignoring what had nearly just transpired, and for that, Audrey was grateful. Not grateful that the thief had butt in, necessarily, but that he had for once managed to shut that big mouth of his.

Embarrassment flooded Audrey’s freezing cheeks and with a jolt, she remembered the tears shed moments ago and quickly wiped at her face with dirty hands. The other man had seen Audrey with soil and gore and worse smeared across her pale face, but never with the glint of tears.

“What are you even doing out here, Dismas?” Audrey hissed with embarrassed impatience at his unexpected company, putting up a very obvious front to hide her shame. It’s not like she had a _pristine_ reputation at the Hamlet, not like certain Vestals or Crusaders, but she was at least better than drunkenly crying by herself on Solstice eve. Or so she _had_ been, before Dismas so effectively caught her doing exactly that. “Shouldn’t you be with the others?”

Dismas shrugged in his lazy way, arms leaned back in the muddied snow with his typical nonchalance despite what he had incidentally happened upon; it simultaneously irked Audrey and allayed her nerves. “Walked all the way out here to ask you the same thing, Auds.”

She forced a laugh, which sounded as hollow to Audrey as the grave before her. “I’m having the time of my _life_ out here, brigand. Truly. The ghouls tell the _best_ jokes this time of year.”

“Tell me one, then,” Dismas challenged.

Audrey looked from him to the massive hole in the earth, dug by her own hands and precious shovel, now cast aside, useless. At the end of its worth. Free and able to dig up as many tombs as it could ever care to, yet finding little reason to. What it had been looking for all these years hadn’t been in any of the caskets or wine bottles, and yet it had nothing else to its sullied name to search. “How many adventurers does it take to die in a pit, hmm?” Audrey asked to the grave.

It didn’t respond, and neither did the man next to her.

After a long pause for comedic timing, Audrey turned to Dismas with her signature grin and beamed, “Just one!”

He didn’t laugh. Drats. _She_ personally found it positively _hilarious_ , so funny in fact, that the tears began to bead at her eyes once more with her manic laughter. Audrey held the tears in, for decorum’s sake, for her _own_ sake, until she felt something surprising, something rough and _warm_ , covering her own freezing hand.

Dismas wordlessly clasped his calloused hand over the one still gripping the broken glass like deliverance, forcing the tears out past Audrey’s stormy eyes and down her freezing cheeks. The Highwayman didn’t comment on it, didn’t acknowledge the soft shake of Audrey’s body, didn’t pass judgement on the way her fingers dug into the glass when she clenched her hand in barely-restrained anguish, drawing thin lines of red across her ashen skin. When her laughter finally ceased to a small, hiccuping sound, then eventually silence, Dismas gently grabbed the bottle shard from her bleeding fingers and resolutely tossed it into the grave.

She let him. Audrey wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not at the sharp absence from her hands, still too exhausted inside and out to be sure of anything, and barely noticed the freezing air flooding the tiny wounds on her naked fingertips. 

His hand didn’t leave hers after that, despite Audrey’s self-imposed threat being out of the way, and instead untied her fingerless gloves on her injured hand.

“What are -- ”

“Quit fidgeting, lass,” the older man huffed when Audrey tried to pull away, hands careful as he pushed the material back, and with a lilted smirk, continued, “Else you’ll bleed on your best coat.” Audrey bristled in fond annoyance at that -- the bastard was using her own taunts in battle against her, and she was tempted to casually push Dismas into the fresh grave for mocking her. But then he paused, drew her hand closer with narrowed eyes as if spotting something offending on her calloused palm, and when he glanced back up at her, it was with a grin on his face. “That’s quite a promising palm. I see luck and love and… a long life!”

He moved a blunt fingertip over each line for emphasis, and Audrey shivered before yanking her hand from Dismas’ grasp, palm still tingling from his touch. She understood what he was doing, she had seen the Highwayman’s tricks for nearly a year now, and knew Dismas was a silver-tongued con man when he wanted to be. 

Audrey scoffed and narrowed her eyes, drunken mind recoiling at the palm-reading as if it were a terrible accusation of her character. “ _Nonsense_ , Dismas. I’ve already expended all the luck, love, and long life meant for me. Squandered it all on a man who never even cared.”

Dismas just snorted and met her glare. “I always thought you were above letting a man dictate your life.”

Tears pricked at Audrey’s eyes from that, as if she’d been slapped -- angry tears, mournful tears, _helpless_ tears. Dismas couldn’t understand what it meant to be trapped and forced to be settled against his will, a songbird locked away to be hidden until its next performance, for years upon _years_. Over a decade of mantras to chant and molds to fit and songs to sing, and if she’d refused… Light have mercy. 

Solstice eve was unequivocally the _worst, longest_ performance of all. 

Year after year, without fail, while the moods were merry and the streets were white, while every home and business was festively decorated to the nines -- their own house even more so than others -- Audrey turmoiled within. Her husband had given her gifts while they had formally courted, but no longer. Later, that money had to be spent elsewhere, which was fine with Audrey; she didn’t like the way her husband strutted about afterwards as if she owed him something, as if he could do no wrong thereafter. 

On top of that, any guests they hosted for the holiday would fawn over her husband, tell Audrey what a lucky lady she was to be blessed with such a wonderful man who clearly spoiled her. 

Audrey would smile and nod and drink. 

For she was practiced, precise, _perfect_ , her mother’s mantras would ring in her mind, and she would play the unrelenting role of loving wife while her husband squandered their family name with every vice under the Light. It was years into their unhappy marriage that Audrey began to carry the letter opener.

“I don’t _know_ what I’m above anymore, Dismas -- ” Audrey huffed, tears wetting her voice embarrassingly. 

It was true: the unhappy maiden, bird in a cage, _dispassionate wife_ was a role she knew to her very core, a role her mother had trained her for since Audrey was old enough to walk straight with a book atop her head. She knew it intimately, more so than anything else about herself, and all of those unknowns, all of those blank spaces that created this new, _adrift_ Audrey, it scared her even more than dying alone with a man she hated. 

_Lost_ is what Audrey was now.

“You’re above _this_ ,” came the hard-edged response, the first shred of emotion that Dismas had let slip past his nonchalance since he found her there, huddled in on herself, and Audrey blinked in surprise at the sound of it.

More to herself, she looked to the empty grave, then to her muddied, bloodied hands, and wondered, “Am I?”

“You are if you want to be.”

It was as simple as that in the Highwayman’s words, all matter-of-fact and indisputable certainty that left Audrey aghast -- this was a man who had fallen to and climbed from the clutches of base brigandry. Who had forged his own future after leaving nothing but a bloody mess to haunt him of his past. For a moment, Dismas looked as if he might grab her hand once more but hesitated, and when she looked up at him, Audrey found glowering eyes staring down at her, passionate and pained, brows furrowed in concern. 

Dismas was hard to look at, when he looked at her this way, Audrey mused with a fragile smile. She looked back down to her messy hand that still bled from the glass but tingled from his touch, then traced the path in her palms, and when Audrey spoke, her voice was hesitant as she recalled: “‘Luck and love and a long life’, huh? It’s always empty flattery with you, Dismas.”

He stopped hesitating then, and Audrey watched with torpid surreality as the Highwayman reached out, grasped her shoulder, and drew Audrey close against his chest. 

Audrey was stunned into compliance, breath catching at the sudden proximity, mind blanking at the scent and touch and _warmth_ radiating from the man holding her. Dismas didn’t do this, _Audrey_ didn’t do this, not with others and certainly not with each other -- it was too soft, vulnerable, _loving_ and was all the things neither of them knew how to be anymore. Audrey coiled tight with automatic resistance, unaccustomed to being so close with anyone, even in her marriage, and when Dismas spoke, she could _feel_ his words against her.

“You can consider this one a promise, then,” his voice was low, warming her skin where they touched cheek to cheek, and though Audrey was practiced, poised, _perfected_ , she felt herself begin to crumble at Dismas’ words.

Slowly, her body drawn painfully taut, her chest heaving with unspent anguish, eyes blurry and unfocused, Audrey willed herself under control, willed the stuttering gasps away.

She fought it, until she didn’t.

Until she _couldn’t_.

Like a cracking dam, inch by inch until the floods could not be held any longer, Audrey let herself slump forward, let her hands raise to clutch at the Highwayman’s too-large coat, and allowed Dismas to just _hold_ her as she broke apart. Her sobs echoed into the grave below them, and with Audrey’s drunken state, could have awoken the dead as she grasped to Dismas like a lifeline. 

He didn’t whisper sweet nothings in her ear, didn’t try to allay her sorrows with his gallows humor, didn’t try to hush her as anyone else from Audrey’s past surely would have, and instead merely stroked her back with a surprisingly gentle touch. Audrey savored it and the comfort it offered, crying into Dismas’ neck for however long, decades worth of hope and cowardice piled high to be released as painful sobs. And through it all, Dismas held her together while she fell apart in his arms entirely.

“ _I hate him_ ,” Audrey whispered, feeling shaken at her admission -- she wasn’t even sure if Dismas knew who she meant. “I _hate_ him, Dismas.”

“...I know, Audrey,” Dismas whispered back, arms tight. “I hate him, too.”

It felt so _good_ to be so _painfully_ honest, to open the floodgates and let the hate pour out, petty as it was after all this time. This was Audrey’s first Solstice eve without the monster of a man who shook her ornate cage, yet still he owned her, and Audrey hated how astray she was without him. She was bitter, and cried. She was angry, and cried. She was _lost_ , until she wasn’t.

Dismas had found her.

The thought softened Audrey’s sobs until they were mere hiccups and she shook at how suddenly cold and hollowed out she felt, then the two of them fell to silence entirely. Close, companionable silence. 

When Audrey eventually opened her eyes, she was surprised to see tufts of white snow falling upon them, fresh and new and lovely. It dusted Dismas’ greying black hair, chilled Audrey’s injured bare hand, and had started to fill the grave she had so painstakingly dug some time earlier. The broken bottle shard within was consumed and vanished within the pillowy white softness, buried in its final resting place for good.

“You okay, lass?” Dismas eventually murmured, lips warming her ear.

She shivered, then nodded.

They didn’t immediately part, neither seeming willing to untangle themselves from the comfortable chaos they had sown themselves into just yet.

“I know what it’s like,” continued the Highwayman, more serious and forthcoming than Audrey had ever heard him; she liked it, she quickly decided, and Dismas spoke again. “To have your past define who you are. To feel _lost_ without it.” Audrey shouldn’t have been so surprised by that, knowing Dismas’ grisly history as a brigand, but she was aghast at his easy ability to put that feeling to words regardless. “But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can hold your past or you can grasp your future, but you can’t embrace both.”

It shook her, and if she wasn’t already emotionally exhausted, Audrey might have choked up once more. Instead, she merely sniffled, smiled, then hesitantly drew back and parted them both to the cold air. 

“Thanks for finding me, Dismas,” she said meaningfully, aching with new truths. “Coming to the Hamlet was the best thing I’ve done with my life, clearly.”

“That makes two of us,” Dismas chuckled, and after they rose to their feet and stepped away from the grave still slowly filling with snow, Dismas ducked down and grabbed Audrey’s trusty shovel and infamous pointed hat, shook the fresh frost from them, then placed the hat atop his own head. Before the Grave Robber could ask what he was doing, Dismas turned to her and swept her off her still-wobbly, rather-drunk feet back into his warm arms in one fluid motion, making Audrey gasp in delighted shock. She had never been picked up before, not even on her wedding day. 

Cheeks flushed in amused embarrassment, Audrey hid her grinning face behind her hands, half tempted to swat at Dismas until he released her, but found she couldn’t bring herself to. She _liked_ his proximity, she was surprised to realize, she _liked_ him holding her -- though had he tried before tonight, Dismas most likely would have received a slap for his efforts.

But she trusted him. When she’d been at her lowest, lost to the gloom of the grave, Dismas had been her Light in the dark, and Audrey had clung to it like her own personal salvation.

Going forward, she wouldn’t rely on her ghost of a husband to define her. 

She wouldn’t rely on Dismas to save her.

No, Audrey would walk with confidence on her own two feet, needing no one to tell her how to live or make her feel less. But for now…

...for now, it was nice to be held. 

…

“What’s this?” 

Audrey sniffed disdainfully at the warm mug Dismas placed in her hands, watching the dark, creamy liquid swirling within it with her eyebrows narrowed in suspicion. It wasn’t tea, and it certainly wasn’t _liquor_. Coffee?

“Cocoa,” Dismas answered with a mug of his own, taking a seat next to her on the couch. They were in the common rooms, wonderfully alone while the rest of the Hamlet celebrated Solstice eve out in the town square. Audrey could hear their cheers and revelry over the crackle of the fire across from them, and found she was more than fine in here with Dismas, away from the religious racket. “Try it,” Dismas grinned from behind his scarf.

She did, and she winced at the overwhelming sugary taste. “It’s… _sweet_.”

“It is.”

“I don’t like sweet things,” Audrey admitted with a huff, impulsively giving it another taste and withdrawing with the same grimace. 

Dismas just chuckled and took a sip of his own. “Neither do I, usually.”

She had originally intended to ask for wine when they first sat down together, knowing Dismas always had a stash of his own hidden away, but the burn of the cuts at her fingers made Audrey change her mind. _There’s always tomorrow to drink_ , she patiently thought to herself, taking another sip of the cocoa and attempting to savor it. _Or the day after that, or perhaps even the day after that_ , she smiled secretly behind the rim of the mug, glad to be found. There would be plenty more days to come for her, Audrey hoped, and let the idea of that plus the sense of peace it brought with it envelop her blissfully, muttering, “This is the best Solstice ever, you know.”

With a snort, Dismas drained his mug then set it down with a _clink_ and slid closer to Audrey, just slightly, just enough for her to feel his warmth nearly the way she had when he had hugged her in the graveyard. “It’s your best Solstice _yet_ , you mean.”

Audrey laughed at that, the first true, genuine laugh she had felt all night, then pulled her feet up to the couch and leaned against Dismas comfortably, cocoa in hand, smiling.

“ _Yet_ ,” she finally agreed with certainty.

**Author's Note:**

> Having lived through a lengthy abusive relationship myself, this particular fic was a bit personal for me. Sometimes it's hard not to let certain aspects of it define you, as I remember how ironically lost I felt once I got away and wanted to showcase that feeling in Audrey's first Solstice without her husband. I was shocked to write Audrey like this because she's always such a bastion of strength and sass in my mind normally, but her unhappy life from before grabbed my interest and ran away with me, yet again.
> 
> Vault, I tried to leave tiny references to your Dismas and Friends Audrey, so I hope you enjoyed it. :) And that it wasn't too dreary :')


End file.
